Crappie.com - Getting Schooled in Pushing Soft-Plastics By Bernard Williams

Several weeks ago, I got a chance to fish with Professional Crappie Guide Warren Cotton on Grenada Lake. This was an unplanned guide trip; I arrived at the lake with all intentions of fishing the day alone. Cotton pulls up and offers to take me out, we’re good friends and those offers don’t come every day. I quickly locked up my equipment and joined him in his big Ranger.

I asked Cotton what would we use, “We’ll start with the Big Bite Crappie Minnr, in the 2” size. It’s an excellent cold water bait. During the winter months crappie are lethargic, they sit and wait for shad to fall down and out of the schools. Shad bunch up during this time strictly for protection. When they’re attacked by predator fish like crappie, some get injured in the process and fall below the school. These are the ones I’m trying to emulate. I want to fish just below where I see the shad balls. Today they’re around the 10’ to 11’ range; we’ll be trolling our baits around 12’. Since it’s early in the day, it should be productive”.

When I’m fishing with someone I always let them be the captain; I just get in and fish. Warren knows Grenada as good as anyone I know; it didn’t take long after we got the poles out for us to start catching fish. But before we started fishing, he did his side and down scanning. When the area looked right I could hear Cotton say, “We’ll start here, this area is holding quite a few bait fish. I know the crappie are not far away”. Warren uses the high-end Lowrance Touch Systems; the HDS Gen2 Touch 12 and 10. These units show great target separation.

Here’s something I noticed about his trolling style, he keeps his hands on his poles while they’re in the rod rack. Oh, by the way, he uses those high-end Driftmaster Stalkers. When asked why he places his hand on the rods, his response was, “Pushing Big Bite jigs produce lots bites, and some are so delicate you can barely see the rod or line move. I use my sense of touch as well as my sense of feel to increase my bite detection.” As he was saying that he immediately set the hook on a crappie. I was carefully watching all the pole tips and I never saw the bite. That was truly amazing. I just wondered how many bites I miss by not using both of my senses.

I watched another trick Cotton uses, his rod holders are about 5 inches above his knees. He gets down to pole level and watches his poles at eye level. I asked Warren, is that necessary? His response was, “I tournament fish a lot, I only have to catch 7 fish. I want my 7 to be the biggest 7 fish of the day. The only way to do that with 6 or 8 poles is to make every bite count. I can see at least 6 of the 8 poles when I get down to eye level. I can see the up bite; that’s when a fish grabs the lure and swims up. I immediately see the pole tip rise up a little. I know it’s a fish and it’s time to set the hook.

The bite that day was generally slow, however we managed to trick 16 crappie over 12”. We had about 4 that reached the 15” to 16” range. Not bad for a day when other fishermen were leaving empty-handed. It wasn’t the fish that Warren was after, it was the fishing experience. When you put a writer with a great fisherman, both come away with a new understanding of the sport of crappie fishing.
Here’s a list of the equipment Warren used and all products can be purchase at Cabelas local store or online as www.cabelas.com: